pert fly-catcher. The nectar or honey which they sip from the different
flowers, being of itself insufficient to support them, is used more as if to
allay their thirst. I have seen many of these birds kept in partial confinement,
when they were supplied with artificial flowers made for the purpose,
in the corollas of which water with honey or sugar dissolved in it
was placed. The birds were fed on these substances exclusively, but seldom
lived many months, and on being examined after death, were found
to be extremely emaciated. Others, on the contrary, which were supplied
twice a-day with fresh flowers from the woods or garden, placed in a room
with windows merely closed with moschetto gauze-netting, through which
minute insects were able to enter, lived twelve months, at the expiration
of which time their liberty was granted them, the person who kept them
having had a long voyage to perform. The room was kept artificially
warm during the winter months, and these, in Lower Louisiana, are seldom
so cold as to produce ice. On examining an orange-tree which had
been placed in the room where these Humming Birds were kept, no appearance
of a nest was to be seen, although the birds had frequently been
observed caressing each other. Some have been occasionally kept confined
in our Middle Districts, but I have not ascertained that any one survived
a winter.
The Humming Bird does not shun mankind so much as birds generally
do. It frequently approaches flowers in the windows, or even in
rooms when the windows are kept open, during the extreme heat of the
day, and returns, when not interrupted, as long as the flowers are unfaded.
They are extremely abundant in Louisiana during spring and summer,
and wherever a fine plant of the trumpet-flower is met with in the woods,
one or more Humming Birds are generally seen about it, and now and
then so many as ten or twelve at a time. They are quarrelsome, and have
frequent battles in the air, especially the male birds. Should one be
feeding on a flower, and another approach it, they are both immediately
seen to rise in the air, twittering and twirling in a spiral manner until out
of sight. The conflict over, the victor immediately returns to the flower.
If comparison might enable you, kind reader, to form some tolerably
accurate idea of their peculiar mode of flight, and their appearance when
on wing, I would say, that were both objects of the same colour, a large
sphinx or moth, when moving from one flower to another, and in a direct
line, comes nearer the Humming Bird in aspect than any other object with
which I am acquainted.
Having heard several persons remark that these little creatures had
been procured with less injury to their plumage, by shooting them witli
water, I was tempted to make the experiment, having been in the habit
of killing them either with remarkably small shot, or with sand. However,
finding that even when within a few paces, I seldom brought one to
the ground when I used water instead of shot, and was moreover obliged
to clean my gun after every discharge, I abandoned the scheme, and feel
confident that it can never have been^used with material advantage. I
have frequently secured some by employing an insect net, and were this
machine used with dexterity, it would afford the best means of procuring
Humming Birds.
I have represented ten of these pretty and most interesting birds, in
various positions, flitting, feeding, caressing each other, or sitting on the
slender stalks of the trumpet-flower and pluming themselves. The diversity
of action and attitude thus exhibited, may, I trust, prove sufficient to
present a faithful idea of their appearance and manners. A figure of the
nest you will find elsewhere. The nest is generally placed low, on the
horizontal branch of any kind of tree, seldom more than twenty feet from
the ground. They are far from being particular in this matter, as I have
often found a nest attached by one side only to a twig of a rose-bush,
currant, or the strong stalk of a rank weed, sometimes in the middle of the
forest, at other times on the branch of an oak, immediately over the road,
and again in the garden close to the walk.
T R O C H I L U S C O L U B R I S , Linn. Syst. Nat. vol. i. p. 191.—Lath. Ind. Ornith. vol. i.
p. 312.—-Ch. Bonaparte, Synopsis of Birds of the United States, p. 98.
H E D - T H R O A T E D H U M M I N G B I R D , Lath. Synops. vol. ii. p. 7<»9.
H U M M I N G B I R D , T R O C H I L U S C O L U B R I S , Wils. Amer. Ornith. vol. ii. p. 26. PI. 10.
fig. 3. Male; fig. 4. Female.
Adult Male. Plate XLVII. Fig. 1, 1, 1, 1.
Bill long, straight, subulate, depressed at the base, acute; upper
mandible rounded, its edges overlapping. Nostrils basal, linear. Tongue
very extensile, filiform, divided towards the end into two filaments. Feet
very short and feeble; tarsus slender, shorter than the middle toe, partly
feathered ; fore toes united at the base; claws curved, compressed, acute.
Plumage compact, imbricated above and on the throat, with metallic
lustre, blended beneath. Wings long, narrow, a little incurved at the